


another time, another life

by fatalesam (samej)



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Introspection, M/M, POV Second Person, Spoilers, background john/abigail, past arthur/mary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 11:16:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18234143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samej/pseuds/fatalesam
Summary: you used to make plans. you used to think that dutch was right, one last job and we are done, arthur, you used to think about a small house just for you; to hunt and spend just enough to not having to steal again; maybe john and abigail near you, maybe to watch jack grow up, maybe to watch sadie happy, maybe not to see micah’s face never again.





	another time, another life

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [otro tiempo, otra vida](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17839415) by [samej](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samej/pseuds/samej). 



> I still haven't played the epilogue because chapter 6 fucked me up so much. Anyway I needed to write my feelings about Arthur and this came out. English is not my mother language so please be kind if you see mistakes. Thanks so much and I hope you enjoy it.

you used to make plans.

another time, another life: john by your side on the bed, stark naked, stretched like the starfishes you heard some drunk talking about in a saloon you don’t even remember, the blanket covers just the part you shouldn’t want to look at and a warm feeling rises through your neck when you remember what have you both done this night (and many others).

you shouldn’t and there are many reasons, there is abigail and there is jack and the idea that if anyone outside your gang would find out you could be killed, but you can’t stop, at some moment between rhodes and saint denis he has become indispensable for you. he is not mary, oh, god, and thank goodness; he is john; much less smart and much less problematic, he is a way of doing something without the fear of falling again.

(or that was at the beginning).

(now it’s).

(another thing).

it was her fault, really, you gave her her brother back and came back to the camp and emptied your stomach; nothing could make you feel clean because that’s what she was, in a way, unintentionally, she always made you feel as though your clothes weren't as clean as hers and as though you weren’t enough. useful just to make the dirty work and that hasn’t change. the thing you most remember about her is not from the last time you have seen here, her voice desperate, fake and sweet, asking you for a favor; it’s her back when she left you a lifetime ago, the brown of her dress matching the dried blood in your shirt, under the vest, that last look of sorrow or compassion, you don’t even know what could have been worst.

seeing her again was awful, and even if you knew it was going to be like that you went to her like moths go to the light to die. and the same again: not being enough is more than a condition of the soul. you loved mary more than anything and for a second coming back to the camp after leaving her at home is going back to the past, to the time you watched her go with that brown dress, to the saloon where hosea was to tell him that the gang could leave town already; hosea’s hand in your shoulder, this is not a world for love, arthur, and you gulped the whisky; an innocent twenty years old arthur that didn’t know he wouldn’t see another twenty. 

stupid, stupid arthur in love with the stupid, stupid mary.

it was, you were saying, just after seeing her, like a week, like the sixth or seventh night in a row of drinking until you felt asleep. it’s an easy routine to fall to and you used to be careful but every time you stop (killing, drinking, robbing) you see that back, those eyes.

so you let yourself go: spend your days doing awful things, _we are bad men, sadie, but we ain’t them_ , need-justified; and you run so many miles thinking just about hunting and nothing else that your ass hurts although you’ve spent most or your life in a horse. it’s the easiest: to arrive and to eat something and to sit near enough to hear javier sing but not so much that they could ask you to join him; to drink bad whisky and look around from your corner what you all have built, that’s something good you’ve done, isn’t it?; and tully dances and john is late and doesn’t look at jack and you want to hit him so he fucking wakes up.

he doesn’t realize what he’s got, and you shouldn’t care but it hurts a little that it has been john, disaster, who got something you never could: someone ready to follow you up to this point.

(you will remember mary at the end, you’ll look at the blood in your hand and you’ll look at dutch and, fuck, you’ll think, how smart you were when you decided not to follow me).

stupid, stupid arthur.

that night you are in your bed, falling already into unconsciousness and the bottom of the bottle is a swallow away and there is no more singing nor the crackle of the bonfire, just snoring from a tent and sighs from another one. 

suddenly you hear someone coming and you know who is it even before seeing john’s silhouette on the entrance. you hardly try to get up and let the bottle fall to your feet, hey, arthur, he says, with that voice that seems to have passed through sandpaper before leaving his mouth, you know he is really thinking that you cannot go on like this, he just doesn’t know how to say it because he is john, less smart and less problematic. you want him to leave you alone but you cannot even do that.

the thing is that you know other things, you know how he looks at you when he thinks you don’t realize, and you should not want but, fuck, what’s wrong about wanting to be with someone that doesn’t make you feel like shit, you just want something different, so pushing him away becomes into grabbing him from the shirt and drawing him to your mouth.

you don’t say it aloud, you can still say no, john, because it’s really not necessary, but john doesn’t _want_ to say no, of course, and it’s easy to grab his hair and to kiss him and to let the growl he lets go travel directly into your groin and, goddamnit, it feels good, and next morning you won’t remember even if you came or if john came but you remember how it was to sleep without dreams and it is worth it in spite of the hungover and waking up alone.

once turns into twice, twice into three times, but you never do it in the camp again because you cannot look abigail in the eyes. you are being a hypocrite and you know it but you don’t stop. to fuck each other senseless turns into john in your room in valentine, into meeting before a whisky in an anonymous bar and you going up to take a bath and john breaking in through the window. it turns into learning how to do this with a man, the similarities and differences and your hands on john’s shoulders and your mouth licking his back and oh, god, you may ve going to hell but you understand that other sins will be in the queue before the sodomy.

it was another time, another life, before guarma and before the rope threatening john’s neck and before dutch threatening everyone’s life.

less smart, less problematic, but just clever enough to always know where to find you. it’s been a good day, the horses hitched to the same tree, the wind stirring flowers you’ve never seen before and not a soul in miles around. improvised tent and sated hunger and you are lying down, looking at the stars like two assholes. you were going to fake being asleep but john turns his head and you get that there is someone that can resist his look on this moment but that’s not you.

you hands on his hips, his legs around your waist, arthur, fuck, arthur, harder, and you bite his mouth so he can’t keep talking and asking for more. you give it to him, nonetheless.

once, much later, you are giving him your back while brushing your horse and think about nothing and says, abigail knows it, ya’ know, and you can’t turn around because surely something is going to show in your face, he can read it for sure, that mix of shame and hope because he is here telling you this and it doesn’t feel like a verdict, doesn’t feel like he is going to run from you; in the end you need him more than he needs you and that, you didn’t see it coming.

less smart, less problematic and stupid, stupid arthur. john keeps talking: she’s not angry, I think. a pause, he takes a breath, i think she doesn’t care, if it’s you.

you do turn there, you look at him and you take off your hat, mangle it in your hands, the nerves betray you.

why.

why what, arthur.

why doesn’t she care if it’s me. 

john looks at you with that fucking face he puts on sometimes, that one you cannot deny anything to, that puts you sometimes on your knees and sometimes in the bed and that you kiss just so you don’t have to look at it, and with that goddamned face he shrugs and smiles and says

what the fuck do i know about women

there is something else, underneath, that he does not say because it’s not needed, and in a way you feel it right back at him and in another way you want to break his face, just put there some more scars, but in the end what you do is go to him and kiss him.

much later you will be watching the sunrise and your ass will hurt and john will laugh at that, you’ll see when you spend some time more in the horse and you will growl and that is one of the moments you will remember.

one of the moments you will remember in the final act.

when you die (it seems too long until it happens, but it really isn’t) and the sun is coming up, and you’ve saved john, that’s the most important thing, you will remember this, his smile and how he always closes his eyes when he licks into your mouth and how he comes like he hurts and how he always runs out of air because he gives too much; maybe that’s what makes you addicted to him, how he gives everything once he decides he can, how he does it with you, like it was impossible for you to betray him, not you, not him.

you will remember about that. 

but in the meantime: it all changes in guarma. it all changes when you are told, no half measures, that you are going to die more soon than late and that it’s because you killed someone with your fists. you don’t know at first how to focus because everything is going to shit: dutch is ungovernable and you were all saved by sadie and john is in jail and to disobey the first one is the hardest thing you have done. when sadie tells you about saving him you feel stupid, because he deserves it, in the end (how many times have you already saved him, though?) but there is something that pulls you to, to dutch; the issue is that you don’t know, for the first time, where is he going.

you take some time to see that the only thing that matters is where are _you_ going, but it’s never late for that.

it all changes in guarma but above everything _you_ change and when you save john and tell him about dutch you realize (and him, too) that you are talking different to him because what you had, afternoons under the sun and nights under the stars belong to

another time, another life,

a life that was not about to end. 

you used to make plans. you used to think that dutch was right, one last job and we are done, arthur, you used to think about a small house just for you; to hunt and spend just enough to not having to steal again; maybe john and abigail near you, maybe to watch jack grow up, maybe to watch sadie happy, maybe not to see micah’s face never again. 

now it’s different: you are more ghost than people. 

the worst of it all if that you think about killing micah but not about killing dutch, not even in the end, when is also, or even more, to blame. micah is a rat and always have been but it’s dutch the one that broke all the confidence, the one that left you all to rot and yet you don’t want to kill him. you can’t _want_ to kill him, is more than a boss, more than a friend, you’ve killed for him until the very end and if things were just slightly different, you could be killing for him now, too.

anyway, you don’t want to think you’ve lost, because that way everything is lost. do a loving act, that nun in the train station said, and that’s what you’ve done. if you can do something to redeem yourself, let it be john and the chance of a life you haven’t had or you couldn't find.

do a loving act, she said, and you think, closing your eyes when the sun is coming up, let it be john and that little hope it opens to him while you stay back, not micah running like a rat, not dutch running like the coward you never thought he was, no, let it be john calling you brother.

it’s late, but you learn then that is so much easier to greet death if one isn’t afraid.

and, truth be told, you aren’t anymore.


End file.
